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On Neo-Arthurian Neo-Tolkienism: Genre troubles

Recently, I was on the Steampunk Scholar,
reading through his many writings on Steampunk. Eventually, I came to his posts
where he dealt with some of his criticisms which he received over at
Ferratbrain. In short, a writer over there took issue with how the Steampunk
Scholar arrived at his thesis—that what we call ‘steampunk’ is not actually a
genre but rather an aesthetic. Reading through both the scholar’s incomplete
response and the critic’s original remarks, I felt compelled to think on how
Arthuriana functioned as a genre or aesthetic.

Now,
I must say this: I do not care much about genre. I am mildly fascinated by
aesthetics, but not by genre. Why is because I am one of those poststructualists
who does not believe that genre can be fitted into any inherent niche; what
constituted one genre, may, to another, constitute something wholly different.
The difference between genre, sub-genre, and how one should differentiate just
is not something which fascinates me as the debate often trickles down into
hair-splitting. I hold that there is something loosely defined as genre, in the
sense, that there is a sizable difference between what we call “High Fantasy”
and “Space Opera,” and that each of those specific sub-genres belong to
something which is, in turn, a sort of umbrella term for its numerous sub-sets,
but beyond that, I care not for trying to create a totality out of fragments.

So,
when it comes to the Arthurian tradition, what do we have? Should it be
classified as a genre or perhaps as an aesthetic?

Paradoxically,
I feel that Arthuriana can be both. Yet also more paradoxically, neither.

Let
me explain.

In
the Middle Ages, it is no doubt that the Arthurian legend constituted a genre;
much scholarship has elucidated how numerous texts—Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, Chrétien
de Troyes’s Arthurian Romances,
Thomas Malroy’s Le Morte Darthur—were
either hugely influential on the legend or were outright blockbusters when it
came to circulation. People clearly used the legend to promote political
agendas as well as riddling out the great moral questions of life. Part of what
I feel constitutes a genre (or sub-genre) is how to reacts to the
social-material reality of its day, how it interacts with both the past and
future. The medieval King Arthur mythos did this and more, creating a thread
which, as controversial as it sounds, came to rival that of Jesus Christ.

But,
and here is where it gets sticky: if in the Middle Ages the Arthurian legend
constituted a genre, then it probably no longer even constitutes a sub-genre
(or however it is you want to define those ambiguous terms).

Why
this is, is very muddled. But it has to do with cultural fragmentation and the
decay of late capitalism. Essentially, what we see from the Early Modern Period
onwards, is an increasing cannibalization of the Arthurian tradition; it
becomes hacked piecemeal and integrated into numerous different genres and
aesthetics, its own originality as a moral or political genre, or as a
Christianized aesthetic, vanished.

Whereas
back in the medieval period you could clearly see people use the Arthurian
tradition for their own moral or political ends, while retaining the
characters, settings, and basic narrative outline, we do not see this (as much)
in our own epoch; rather, what we see is an act whereupon the Arthurian canon
has become a kind of literary means of subsistence for other genres and
aesthetics.

Essentially,
the Arthurian idea has become fodder: crime shows, modern romances, dramas,
action-adventures, and more, all use pieces of the Arthurian tradition, but
rarely anything more than that. So, Arthuriana has become inspiration rather than content in itself.

Contemporary
texts either appropriate fragments of the text—pushing the Roundtable idea of
unity, the titular female villain as a recurring antagonist with vague ties to
Morgan le Fay, serendipitously named characters, etc. – in order to make their
own text seem clever and intertextual, or, fail this, they cleave out narrative
devices, such as the Holy Grail vis-a-vie the Fisher King, to augment their own
morality tale or piece of political theater.

Aesthetically,
we no longer see something which is a clearly defined Arthurian aesthetic (arguably
one never existed since the medieval Arthurian idea was so heavily steeped in a
Christian coating). As I said before, what could be vaguely defined as an
aesthetic, has become subject to thievery by the other genres—a uniquely
decorated, and important, cup becomes the Holy Grail, Sir Gawain’s Christianized
armor is transmogrified into revolutionary modernity (A t-shirt with a
political symbol on it), while King Arthur is reduced to any authority figure
with a crown or predestined fate/career path. But, today, this appropriation
takes on a deeper quality due in no small part to J.R.R Tolkien, but more
specifically, Peter Jackson.

During
the sixties and seventies, as we know, is when The Lord of the Rings truly came into its own. Imitators of all
stripes started to write their own stories based loosely from or inspired by Tolkien’s
original works. This is what we typically call the birth of so-called “High
Fantasy”. It is fantasy with tall, battle ready elves, some kind of goblin/orc-foe,
perhaps some trinket or weapon which needs to be destroyed, and a great evil
rising on the horizon. If the Arthurian idea was a blockbuster in the Middle
Ages, then the Tolkien idea is our epoch’s blockbuster, our own Arthurian idea
re-imagined.

But
this presents a problem since the Arthurian idea has not vanished: Arthurian
texts still remain and there still is a great deal of interest in both the King
Arthur legend, Arthur-figure, and his narrative mythos. The Arthurian and
Tolkien ideas co-exist. Neither have died.

I
am not going to try and sketch out all of the difference between these two
ideas, as that is really the work of some ambitious Ph.D. candidate (of which,
I am not), but I will call attention to how powerfully Peter Jackson’s imaginings
have retrospectively altered what we see as fantasy, to the degree, where the
lines of demarcation between Tolkien and King Arthur have been blurred.

To
me, it seems that writers are fusing both traditions together. They are taking
parts from each and ending up with a hybrid form; after Peter Jackson’s
re-telling, we have a Tolkien-inspired aesthetic which disseminated itself through
popular culture. Once disseminated, young millennial imaginations, especially
when they came of age, started to explore the Tolkien idea through their own
encounters with prior fantasy (i.e., the Arthurian tradition). Whether or not
that they knew they were encountering the Arthurian tradition is not relevant,
as we see a focus on battle-elves, orc-creatures, and the like, while trappings
of the Arthurian legend have been retained; today, it is hard to even
differentiate the two influences since each are generic enough to blend into
one another, yet just unique enough to warrant investigation by genre
historians. The end result, of course, is that we have now a Tolkien-Arthurian Frankenstein’s
monster which no one knows what to do with.

But,
again, this is not to say that what is called the Arthurian-idea does not exist
on its own, because it does, it is just that it has been greatly altered.

Modern
Arthuriana is no longer interested, per se, by the Arthurian legend in itself.
What modern writers are interested in is re-telling the Arthurian legend so as to
deconstruct its conservatism.

Some
writers, yes, use it as a re-telling to justify some long-lost conservative
world which never was, such as T.H White, but others, such as Merriam Zimmer Bradley,
use the legend to push a feminist reading and flesh-out the female subjectivity
trapped within the mother text. But that is the point: that whether it is a
feminist, Queer, or Post-colonial reading, contemporary writers, by and large,
tend to only associate with the legend insofar as it acts as a template for
their own politicized fantasy world.

Because
of this, the aesthetic—whatever could really be called as such— becomes lost in
the author’s own Frankensteinian aesthetic—it becomes less about the genre
(Tolkien-Arthurian), less about the aesthetic, and more about the fusion of
genre into aesthetic (and vice versa).
The sign-systems are de-functionalized; whatever it meant to write a
neo-Arthurian text, or a neo-Tolkien text, no longer matters when compared to
the author utilizing tropes and conventions from whatever ideas they borrow in
order to build their own fantasy world re-imagined from pilfered pieces of other
ideas.

Due
to everything above, I do not see a great deal of reason as to why issues of
genre and aesthetic should be thought of in relation to the Arthurian
tradition. I am certainly not going to deride anyone who does think of these things,
since, after all, an erudite investigation could yield fantastic results. It is
just that for my own interests, in studying on the medieval and modern collide,
genre and aesthetic is not as important as understanding the conceptual
framework for how the legend survived into the modern, and found its own
expression among the ruins of postmodernity.

Popular Posts

Lately, I was browsing around online and found another handy resource for aspiring medievalists.

Enter, Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute!

The site has links to an extensive book shop, scholarly journals, as well as a free download. See below for links.

General listing: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medievalpress/
Index of titles available for purchase: http://www.wmich.edu/medievalpublications/all-titles
The 'Medieval Globe' book(s): http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/ (Click on title(s) for free download)

Okay, that is all for now. Sometime soon I think that I would like to organize all of my resource links so that I, as well as you, have a concrete listing of reliable resources. Until then, we shall have to make due.